Philip Battley

In the spring of 1913, Parisian businessman Gabriel Astruc opens a new theater on the Champs Elysées. The first performance is the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring', danced by the Ballet Russes. The rehearsal process is extremely fraught: the orchestra dislike Stravinsky's harsh, atonal music; the dancers dislike the 'ugly' choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky. The volatile, bisexual Nijinsky is in a strained relationship with the much older Sergei Diaghilev, the Ballet Russes' charismatic but manipulative impresario. Public expectation is extremely high after Nijinsky's success in 'L'apres-midi d'un faune'. Finally, 'The Rite of Spring' premieres to a gossip-loving, febrile, fashion-conscious Parisian audience sharply divided as to its merits.

Paralysed from the waist down after a car crash, Julie Hill struggles to get used to her disability and to save her marriage. It looks as if her husband will leave her. Then doctors try a revolutionary treatment which feeds electrical impulses to her leg muscles - allowing her to ride a bicycle once again and so go out for bike rides with her family. Her marriage survives and she and her husband end up closer together than before.

When the heiress of a luxury hotel chain is kidnapped at her dingy motel outside Detroit by a band of ruthless sex traffickers, her downtrodden assistant must figure out a way to rescue her.

Inspector Robert Lewis and Sergeant James Hathaway solve the tough cases that the learned inhabitants of Oxford throw at them.

A chronicle of the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era—with great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy.